In the case where users would create their own animations on a web site,
injecting frames at runtime with content dynamically into a .swf would
not be the way to do it. You would want to control the animation with
Actionscript. Adding that ability to the player would add unecessary
overhead while not solving any real-world problem.
Even on collaborative projects, where would the animation content live
that would be injected? On collaborative projects, each animator can
create their own .swfs and then a programmer loads them all in where
they like into a central .swf.
You had asked for someone to create a Flash 9 .swf for you with some
blank frames, but I don't see what that would solve since you would
still need to inject the content of the animation. Sorry, still just
trying to understand why this would be useful... I think this disussion
has been a good mental excercise at least. :)
Jason Merrill
Bank of America
GT&O Learning & Leadership Development
eTools & Multimedia Team
________________________________
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of mtthwnthnyhys
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 5:15 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [flexcoders] Re: Programmatically create MovieClip
frames?
Thanks Jason, Troy, and Paul, for all your help/feedback.
Jason, I can't think of a use case for adding frames to a
MovieClip either. Unless of course,
you wanted to have animations that you could control with AS3,
but didn't have access to
the Flash CS3 preview. Though, now that I think about it, it
seems like there are some
interesting possibilities for dynamically generated animations.
Imagine a 'community' site that invited users to create their
own animated avatars... or a
video game in which the player designs his or her own
character... or collaborative
animation project in which different artists are creating
different parts, maybe even
individual frames of an animated sequence... or where a lead
animator is creating the key
frames, and 'tweeners' are creating the in between frames... you
could even track and
control this CVS-like, without having to pass around/merge FLAs.
Maybe these are pretty abstract, I know... I thought of them
just now.
The point is, I personally don't WANT to add frames to a
MovieClip. But I don't have access
to the Flash CS3 preview, and so I was wondering if it was
possible to generate AS3/AVM2
MovieClips, in some other way. MovieClip.appendFrame() seems
like it'd be easier than
the method Troy describes of creating a custom AnimatedSprite
class, which will
eventually have all or most of the methods of a MovieClip... at
least, the timeline control
methods.
Basically, if I were having this problem 20 days from now... I
wouldn't be having this
problem. You're right, I'd just make the MovieClips in Flash
CS3, export the library into a
SWC, and use them from there in my Flex app as I wanted. That
would definately be the
easiest way.
Luckily, I foresaw this problem pretty early on in the project,
so I have plenty of time to
work on other things while I figure out the best way to handle
this... maybe the other
things will even take me until the end of April and I won't have
this problem at all. In
anycase, I appreciate all your help, and offers to help. If it
turns out that I need someone
to make me a SWF with a few blank frames somewhere down the
line, I'll definately be
hitting one of you guys up for that.
Other than that, I think we can call this discussion closed.
Unless someone has more
information about it. Although, and maybe this is a seperate
post/question in itself, I
thought I once heard about being able to control/communicate
with AVM1Movies once the
new version of Flash came out... I guess that's not happening?
NO DYNAMICALLY ADDING FRAMES TO MOVIE CLIPS!! Got it.
Thanks all,
//Matt
--- In [email protected]
<mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com> , "Troy Gilbert"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Okay, how about the simple scenario where you want the
playback of a series
> of frames of animation... you know, exactly what a movie clip
does? I could
> definitely do this by creating a class that extends sprite and
in that class
> keeping an array of shapes (or sprites) and each ENTER_FRAME
event moving my
> virtual playhead forward to the next sprite, etc., etc...
>
> And you know what I'd get? A MovieClip! Looks like Adobe
already wrote that
> one! ;-)
>
> Seriously, though, the problem is not that you can't
programmatically edit a
> MovieClip, it's that Adobe's docs don't make it clear why you
wouldn't want
> to do that... because the MovieClip is a much more complicated
beast that
> stores tween details, etc., that aren't exposed in the API
(details you'd be
> familiar with if you've ever attempt to generate SWF's from
scratch in an
> open-source tool like I did back in the Flash 4 days).
>
> The docs describe MovieClips as basically sprites with
timelines... which
> would lead one to think, "hey, sprite is great, but I need a
timeline 'cause
> I got some animation, so I must need a MovieClip!" I know this
because I
> went down the same route.
>
> What I ended up doing was basically creating an AnimatedSprite
class... it
> has a currentFrame property, and list of frames (which, in my
case, are
> BitmapData's). Each frame it increments currentFrame and
updates its display
> list to include the appropriate bitmapData. Pretty simple
stuff...
>
> So, to address the original poster: MovieClip is just a
mirage! Think of it
> like its got a scarier name like "CompiledSWF" and treat it
like a blackbox.
> It'll make your life easier.
>
> Troy.
>
>
> On 3/29/07, Merrill, Jason <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > Matt,
> >
> > So Paul and I discussed our pointless bickering offlist and
hugged it
> > out. We're good now. Both of us however were just wondering
about this
> > question you have (me, so I could you, him for academic
reasons) since we
> > ironically agreed offlist neither of us could figure a good
use case for
> > needing do do this. Maybe you can explain in more detail
what you will do
> > with these frames once they are inserted. But really, we
probably should
> > move this to a Flashcoding list like Flashcoders.
> >
> > Jason Merrill
> > Bank of America
> > GT&O Learning & Leadership Development
> > eTools & Multimedia Team
> >
> >
> >
>
